Washington, D.C.—In a move that came as a shock both in this city and throughout the planet on which it is located, Standard & Poor’s late Monday downgraded Earth from its unique HHH rating—the only one in the galaxy—to HH+.

The coveted HHH rating—meaning, “extremely habitable”—has become indefensible, the ratings agency said, due to continuing failures to balance the atmospheric carbon budget and an increasingly toxic political debate that renders better policies unlikely any time soon.

Under the new HH+ rating, the Earth is still considered “highly habitable” for humans. However, S&P also changed the planet’s outlook to “negative,” suggesting the possibility of further downgrades.

Critics Cite Dearth of Spaceships

Criticism came fast and furious. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agreed with S&P about the threat of global warming, but made numerous obscure and highly technical criticisms of its carbon calculations, and then sent these to American journalists who don’t understand the word “albedo” and can’t even convert Celsius to Fahrenheit.

“This is not their area of expertise,” said the IPCC in a written statement. “However, we cannot explain ourselves further without peer review. Our next report will be out in about five years.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was even more scathing. “Even as S&P downgraded Earth, investors—those who choose to live here—are proving the silliness of this action,” said Chamber spokesman Terry Form. “If the Earth had really become less habitable, market forces would kick in, and we would see a booming spaceship industry. That’s just not happening.”

One rare supporter of S&P’s decision was the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, popularly known as SETI, located in Mountain View, CA.

“Look, there’s only a snowball’s chance in hell that we’re going to hear from another intelligent civilization,” said SETI senior astronomer Carly Sagan. “But we’re going to keep trying, and thanks to S&P we’ll probably get more funding. As this action shows, Earth’s residents need something to pin their hopes on right now.”

The search for extrasolar planets also proceeds apace, but so far no planet orbiting any star has received a rating close to Earth’s. The next closest is Mars at “-H,” meaning habitable only after vast improvements.

Mars itself was downgraded during the 1990s, once S&P realized that the Face on Mars was merely an optical illusion (a flub that some charge has significantly undermined the agency’s credibility).

Denialism Blamed, Blame Denied

In a recent interview, S&P senior director Troy Easter gave rare insight into one critical factor behind his agency’s action–citing a group of so-called carbon budget “deniers” who have become increasingly prominent in Washington and on the world stage.

“These people are willing to hold a gun to the planet’s head,” Easter said. “Without them, no carbon balancing can happen. And they don’t even think escalating atmospheric carbon dioxide is a problem.”

“This is not the kind of rhetoric you expect to find on triple-H rated planets,” Easter said.

So-called climate skeptics and their political supporters quickly fired back at S&P—even as they also blamed U.S. President Barack Obama for the ratings downgrade and the carbon budget gap, and also for continuing to try to reason with them and showing inadequate leadership.

“Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased dramatically during his term,” said Republican Rep. Michele Badlands, who display a chart comparing the Obama administration’s emissions with those of the George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan governments. “And anyways, planets have shown a remarkable ability to ‘breathe back in’ carbon, when not weighed down by Big Government.”

For that reason, Badlands said, even though she blamed Obama for the ratings change, she wasn’t actually worried about it. “Carbon is good for life,” she said, reiterating a familiar campaign slogan. “Plus, it’s my favorite color.”

“Humanity is the only species that gets to name all the species including itself, an obvious conflict of interest, as if say, rating agencies could rate the credit of countries whose credit ratings they themselves had destroyed through bad ratings…. Uh, where was I? Oh, yes, we have for a long time called ourselves ‘wise’ twice, dressing it up in Latin to show how doubly clever we supposedly are. But where is the proof? Since we are destroying the planet’s livability, our very own habitat, we are dropping one of the sapiens. Provisionally, we are also recommending putting the other one in quotes, so we are Homo “sapiens,” at least until we see whether we are in fact smart enough to save ourselves from self-destruction.”

IPCC Scientists are stuck on the idea that since a chemist was awarded the Nobel prize 100 years ago for an experiment on greenhouse gases, they are never going to doubt his results for planet Earth. First of all, the atmosphere of earth is not a chemistry lab. 2nd. CO2 is the final stage of carbon in its oxidation state meaning that it has little energy to change anything. 3rd. It takes the miracle(cant be duplicated by science) of photosynthesis to convert CO2 + H2O to sugars. 4th Take all the evidence gathered to support the CO2 greenhouse theory and apply it to Organic Carbon compounds and you have a useful theory. Humus has many H bonds and plenty of energy to supply marine bacteria. 5th Just think about what happens when water is polluted with sewage (organic carbon mostly), the BOD is increased and the fish die from Oxygen deprivation. 6th CO2 is a minor problem compared to the loss of soil from farms and deforestation causing leaching of soil into the Ocean. 7th Of course S&P are going to Downgrade the national governments who do not cooperate with the Carbon tax. They profit nothing from Conservation of natural resources like the Soil. What they want is for the People to pay taxes on the use of fossil fuels. They believe that is a step in population control but they are dead wrong. 8th Reforestation is the solution. Fossil Fuel Corporations should be taxed to pay for Reforestation.

WAter vapor absorbs far more IR radiation than does CO2 and it forms clouds, CO2 does not and loses energy quickly thus dissapating. Yes chemists can convert CO2 into sugar but not as efficiently as plants, it takes a lot of energy, which is my point. All the evidence should be pointed at DOM (dissolved organic matter) since it has far more energy to input the ecosystem. Learn your thermodynamics before you leap into a pseudoscientific discussion of your own making.

CO2 has a narrow absorption spectrum and low heat capacity, does not form clouds and can not trap heat of any great volume in the atmos to affect a climate change. You read too many old text books, Earthling. Cosmic rays make the difference between the Cambrian Age and Our Modern Age with Oxygen. There has been a great amount of evolution since then with phytoplankton.